Sea Breeze Mini QAL

Welcome to the last few days of the Sea Breeze Mini QAL hosted by the lovely Angie at Gnome Angel.  This is such a fabulous wee pattern from Canoe Ridge Creations and stitches up really quickly. It has been fun seeing all the interpretations of this mini so far.  

I really wanted to use solids for this mini as they are not something I sew with frequently, but I love the effect of them in small quilts.  I initially thought I would go with autumn colours (think oranges and berry), and as I was searching through my solids,  I found some shot cottons which I thought would be perfect.  Not very autumny at all, but I bought these ages ago and have been wanting a small project to use them on.

Shot cottons have a beautiful sheen to them, almost irridescent in some lights. They are different to normal quilting cottons, in that 2 different solid colours are woven together to form the cloth...one going in one direction and one going in the other. The raw edges of the fabric will show what the 2 colours used are.  The word shot refers to the weaving process where the weft  (horizontal element) is often referred to as a shot  as in shot with colour. (Source: http://spiritcloth.typepad.com)

I was lucky enough to win a Fat Quarter shop voucher last year (thanks Sharon) and had bought some flying geese and HST Bloc Loc rulers with it. These are the best rulers EVER!!!! Seriously, I will never trim HSTs the traditional way again.  This was invaluable in trimming up all the blocks for this quilt. 

I always have to sew just one block together first to see how it goes then I chain pieced all the rest. So much quicker.

Once I had all my blocks made I played around with them to make sure they had enough value in them which is how light or dark they are. Being the Type A personality I am I wanted the value spread evenly through the quilt. There are several ways to check value. I always use my Ruby Beholder which I got from Elisa at Sewing Summit. It lets you see the value of all colours except red. You can also take a black and white photo which is what I have done in this case! It's good to have a range of values in a quilt to give it life otherwise it can be a bit flat.

I chose to put all my blocks facing the same way (that darn Type A personality again!!)  rather than as Megan had arranged them.  Unfortunately shot cottons never photograph that well. It is far more vibrant in real life.  I will quilt this tomorrow and reveal the finished quilt at the link party.

If you are joining along be sure to hashtag your creations on Instagram with the hashtag #seabreezemqal or you can join the Facebook group. This quilt along ends on August 2nd, so be sure to link up your mini (even if it's not finished) on Angie's blog and you will be in with a chance to win some fabulous prizes.  Thanks again Angie for hosting this QAL.